Leto
by Killy Cheesestake
Summary: There's a bit of the raging titan Huntress still in Paula. Now that she's found out that Artemis's death was faked, she's not going to let Dick forget that.


_**Leto** is the mother of Artemis and Apollo and an early lover of Zeus, who left her while she was pregnant. She was cast from Olympus and wandered from place to place, trying to find a home that would accept her without fearing the wrath of Hera. She was infamous for turning the mortals in Lycia who refused her into frogs. Her twins became archers in order to protect her._

* * *

Gotham is warm and dark, just the faintest fingers of sunlight beginning to chase away the stars. Dick can hear the din of traffic a block away and a distant siren somewhere deeper in the city. This street, though, is empty and shadowy and spotted with harsh dots of yellow lights. He's surprised when he doesn't encounter any trouble, but he's not complaining.

There's a diner at the corner, dingy but welcoming. Wally's described it to him. It used to be owned by the Penguin, back when he had been small business only, but when his empire started to expand, he pawned off all his early spots onto old associates at exorbitant prices. The Red Lion is one of the few that has survived. A small drug crime syndicate still runs out of the back, but since it only has a few miles of territory and stays clear of school yards, it doesn't warrant Batman or Nightwing's attention.

Artemis has spoken highly of the place and taken Wally a few times. She'd been to it with her father before the accident that disabled her mother, and though she liked to say that she hated Sportsmaster, she's latched onto the few memories she has of him as a father, consciously or not.

There's a small bell over the door that announces him cheerily. The waitress behind the linoleum counter looks up at him from her game of Soduku and murmurs something that sounds like "I'll be with you in a moment." Besides two or three costumers and the clink of silverware, the diner is empty and quiet. His heart takes a step out of his throat.

Paula has a table to the left and a cup of coffee so strong he can smell it from the doorway. Her jacket is zipped up to her neck and her arms are folded. She looks tired, but her solemn expression suits her high cheekbones and drawn face.

Dick takes off his wool jacket and hangs it on the coat rack next to the door, then adjusts his sunglasses. They tint the whole place a hazy blue and it takes his eyes a second to adjust to the glare of fluorescent light. If Paula knows he's arrived, she doesn't indicate it. Her head is down, her chin disappearing into her collar.

Dick isn't sure what he expected, but Paula Crock isn't it. The Huntress was a cautionary tale for up and coming heroes, but hers wasn't a story told nearly enough. She had started as a vigilante but had been ensnared but Lawrence, who had known of her secret life while managing to keep his own under wraps. He managed to enlist her in a heist under the guise of intelligence recon and then managed to convince her that no one would believe that she'd taken part in it unknowingly. No one really knew if Sportsmaster had known he was falling for the young hero he managed to lure into villainy, but whatever twisted kind of love he had for her hand been one more nail in her career's coffin. Artemis had told him that her mother regretted her past, and Dick believed her. He's met the woman himself, and was always charmed by her soft smiles and quiet anecdotes.

The woman in the booth is not the Paula Crock he's accustomed to. She's slight, but holds herself like her retirement was a temporary leave and that she could still murder anyone in the diner in at least fourteen different ways. She isn't a natural by any means, and the aggression bunching in her muscles seemed strange in someone so small, but she's had a thorough education in the school of hard knocks. Dick is familiar enough with it that he can recognize an alumnus.

He crosses the room and pulls out the chair opposite Paula Crock. It grinds against the floor with a grating noise and she finally looks at him. She sits straighter in her wheelchair and surveys him with wariness. He gives her a loose sort of smile. She doesn't return the cordiality.

"Paladin," she says. Paula almost never addresses anyone by name; she reserves the honor for her family and, recently, Wally and Roy. She's above niceties, above him.

"Good morning, Mrs. Crock." Dick inclines his head. It almost sounds like a question, a request for reciprocation.

Paula doesn't answer for a moment. "Good morning," she replies after a time, but her tone is hard. She isn't here for frivolities. Neither of them speaks and the silence that stretches across the table is enormous and taut, warning away even the waitress, who hovers awkwardly by the kitchen doors and waits for a better chance to interrupt them.

"I wasn't sure you were serious when you asked me out for breakfast," Dick says eventually.

"I don't joke about much," she replies, absently stirring the coffee that he suspects is completely black. Up close, he can see the pearly trails of scars that mark her face and arms, stark against her sallow skin. There's a faint burn mark pressed into her forehead, just under her hairline, that trickles down her cheek. He passingly wonders what horrors she inflicted on whoever had the gall to do that to her.

The waitress approaches them, coffeepot in hand. Dick nods to her. She fills a mug for him and tops off Paula's. He passes on her "can I get you anything else?" (even more emphatically to her "can I offer you a Reach?") and she hurries away, back to Sudoku and air undaggered by passive aggressive looks.

Paula sips her coffee as Dick stirs creamer into his and inclines her head towards the man sipping a Reach two tables over. Sounding thoughtful, she notes, "They're getting quite ubiquitous."

Dick nods. Paula studies his blandness with a calculating, trained eye. He can't tell if it's one she developed as Huntress, or if it just comes with mothering teenagers. He imagines the two possibilities aren't mutually exclusive.

"Are they," she pauses to consider their surroundings, "subscribing to your newsletter?"

"They are absolutely and undeniably evil, Mrs. Crock. If that's what you're asking."

"And is my-" she catches herself. "Is Sportsmaster involved with them?"

Dick picks his words carefully. "He has remained mostly neutral throughout. He has other issues to attend to at the moment."

"Like revenge," she agrees quietly, but it's the still before a storm. He can practically feel the venom in her voice biting into his skin.

He nods again, and there's a birdlike bob to the movement that Zatanna used to tease him about. "Rockin' Robin," she'd say, and he would bob his head in agreement, grinning widely.

He's not grinning now.

Paula takes the spoon from her coffee and places it on her plate, careful reservation restraining her movements. When she looks at him, her eyes are almost black. Her pupils are blown, rimmed by only the thinnest edge of brown.

"She was my daughter," the table cloth bunches where her fingernails dig into it, "_is_ my daughter. And you let me believe she was dead?"

"I didn't- My intention was not to upset you, Mrs. Crock. Alerting more people to her status only puts Tigress in more danger."

"She's _retired_. She shouldn't be in any goddamn danger in the first place!" Paula slams her palms onto the tabletop, punctuating the sentence. He flinches visibly, eyes flicking from her and to the startled faces turning towards them.

She reaches across the table and grabs his collar, tightening her fingers into a fist despite her arthritic hands. Dick's attention snaps back to her and, behind the glasses his eyes are wide. Dick has seen videos of Paula from the old days, grainy security footage and filmed ransom demands. He'd seen proof of what she and Lawrence could do in pictures of their victims, sliced open so that everything soft and necessary had spilled out. But this was different. That was Huntress doing damage. Vigilantes were always ready to do damage. This time it's Paula Fucking Crock preparing to smash his teeth in.

He holds up his hands to placate her, but Paula's grip doesn't loosen. "If we can just stay whelmed for a moment, Mrs. Crock, I promise you I'll do my best to answer all your questions."

A beat. "All of them?"

"Provided you don't crush my trachea."

Paula lets him go and Dick slides back into his chair with a soft _huff_ of released breath. She slips back to casualty easily, taking a delicate sip from her cup of coffee, but her eyes warily dart from the silverware to him a few times.

"While you're off playing James Bond, _Paladin_," she says eventually, and there's a practiced sweetness icing the edge in her voice, "people are dying. While you invest time and money and agents into this little adventure, you're sacrificing hundreds of lives you'd otherwise be protecting."

She's baiting him, he knows. He's never imagined that he would be able to concert Artemis's old, delicate mother with The Huntress, capital "t," but he has no doubt of it now. Paula has been toying with him, testing him, since he first walked in the door. Now, she's looking for a reaction and he knows it.

He doesn't give her one. He doesn't blink, doesn't look away, doesn't back down.

"We're prioritizing. The Light jeopardizes thousands of lives every day. Now that they're colluding with the Reach, we can't afford to ignore them."

As they're conversation resumes, so does the soft murmur of voices around them. Paula considers him for a moment, steepling her fingers in front of her face. "The Reach wasn't public when Artemis went undercover. And given how poorly your attempts at subterfuge have gone, I imagine you didn't know about them before that."

"We knew that the Light was trading with a new partner and that their currency was human beings." Dick sips his coffee with deliberate slowness. It's still bitter enough to wrinkle his nose and difficult to swallow around the lump in his throat. He dumps in a third packet of Sweet n' Low. "And prior to that, we were threatened by an alien race called the Kroloteans. Two alien invasions-"

"-are glamorous distractions." He can tell that she means to sound deadpan, but her voice has dropped. She just sounds world-weary. "If you put half the resources you put into combating," a vague gesture, "whatever all of this is towards something that should actually be the Team's responsibility, you would probably have already saved all the blood diamond miners in Bialya."

"The Light and the Reach _are_ the Team's responsibility, Mrs. Crock. Any Reach success endangers the entire planet."

"That seems like a scale the Justice League should be concerning themselves with."

"The League is…short handed right now." Dick rubs the bridge of his nose. "I'm- _we're_ acting under their authority."

"What do you mean short handed?" Before he can answers, she raises a hand and adds, "Every question, remember?"

Dick sighs, loosely crossing his arms over his chest. "There's a situation off planet requiring their attention."

She accepts his evasiveness after a moment with a dip of her head. "So since Batman isn't on planet to throw on a wig and hotpants and be your Mata Hari, you throw a retired college student back in the field and tell pretty much everyone that she's dead and that one of the people she used to trust most in the world did it?"

He closes his eyes, exhales, then nods.

"And the people you did not alert to her actual status include her volatile and vengeful sister and her volatile, vengeful _and vain_ father?"

"Mrs. Crock, you can't expect us to trust our enemies with the identities of our moles."

She narrows her eyes, but otherwise pretends not to hear him. "You also chose not to tell her mother, who relies on her for reason to get up in the morning."

"I did what I did for Artemis's safety," Dick says tightly, pointedly not clenching his fists as she is. "And I will keep doing what I can to continue insuring the safety of her and the world."

"You can't hope to anticipate every danger she'll face."

"If I didn't have every confidence in her, I wouldn't have sent her undercover." Dick reaches his hand tentatively across the tablet to touch hers, but she snatches it away like he's burned her. He withdraws, looking almost sheepish. "Mrs. Crock, Artemis will be fine. She has your strength."

Paula drops her head and her laugh is so low and bitter that Dick can feel goosebumps crawling under his skin. "How lucky she must be, then," she says, hands dropping to rest of the wheels of her chair.

"I mean," Dick begins again, "that she's resilient. And if I had even the slightest indication that she was going to be hurt, I would be personally retrieving her. I won't allow anything to happen to your daughter. On my honor as a Robin."

That seems to satisfy Paula, at least briefly. She takes out her wallet, pulls out a ten and places it on the table- enough to cover their drinks and a sizeable tip. "I'll hold you to that," she replies, and turns her wheelchair from the table. "Don't think Lawrence left before teaching me how to get revenge on underlings." There's a measured control in the movements; they're mechanical and practiced, and Dick can tell that he hasn't fully abated her concerns. He stands up to follow her so quickly that what remains of his coffee spills onto the tablecloth. Casting an apologetic eye to the waitress, Dick throws a napkin onto the mess and trails Paula to the door. A couple feet from it, he lays a hand on her shoulder to say thank you and goodbye, but she twists in her seat and punches him square in the jaw.

It's sloppy, but with proper training even the most careless strikes can snap through bone. He manages to roll with the hit and spare his teeth, but just barely; the impact sends him sprawling across the counter. She turns herself around as he props himself up on his elbows and rubs the sore spot, but she's already spitting venom before he can fully process what's happened.

"Everything you love, Paladin!" she snarls. "Everything you treasure! Your family. Your city. If anything happens to my daughter, I will turn your world to _ash_. Do you hear me?" Paula goes to hit him again, but this time he catches her fist. Her fingers loosen against his palm, but her eyes are steely.

"If anything happens to Artemis" a hiccup, the smallest of sobs, "I'll hunt you down like a dog."

Dick swallows once, then a second time, trying to bury the lump in his throat, and nods. "There'll be a line, Mrs. Crock."

Paula snorts, and turns away. A slitted line of rising sunlight falls across his face as she opens the door, illuminating the bruise just beginning to blossom on his cheek before she leaves, it shuts and the dinner is a dull and gray again.

Dick sits up on the counter and props his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands. He takes his sunglasses from where they'd fallen next to him and brushes his thumb across a cracked lens. There's a silent curse on his breath, but then the waitress rushes over to him and he has to hush her concerns with brief, noncommittal answers. The scent of cheap shampoo is heady in her hair as he allows her to help him off the counter, but he manages to shrug away her questions and she retreats behind the counter.

He passes her another five dollars, apologizes for the disturbance and crosses the floor to collect his coat. The wool is scratchy on his neck, but he buttons it up fully and pulls the collar to his chin.

Dick has adapted better to being leading the Team than he'd feared, and he's thrived as Nightwing. He's adjusted to the lack of sleep and the physical exhaustion. The lies and alibis have become easier. He has evolved, readjusted, change. In time, the processes will be thoughtless and he'll learn to endure everything his responsibilities entail. In time, everything will seem _normal._

_Almost everything._

The likelihood that the people he loves most, who trust him so totally and completely, will be punished for the sins that are his alone to bear?

No, he doesn't think he'll ever get used to that.

* * *

**A/N**: So I was a little trepidatious about this story, particularly Paula's characterization since we haven't seen much of her, but I've been messing with it for a week so I wanted to get it out there before that little plot thread became irrelevant.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it at least a little bit.


End file.
